Will it be a big deal or a Big Dig?

Electric sports cars. Colonies on Mars. Solar panels on every roof. Sometimes, what Elon Musk wants, Elon Musk works hard to get. Sometimes, like the Hyperloop idea, he opens up the idea to others. But his latest - tunnels under Los Angeles - is one that he's apparently ready to roll up his sleeves and do himself.

After teasing the idea a year ago, Musk Tweeted today that he's got a plan to start digging soon. Like in the next month.

So, now that we know Musk wants to start up a new company called TunnelX (ok, ok, it'll probably have a better name than that), where will the tunnel be? True to form, it'll radiate out from Musk himself.

Sounds good, right? Especially when we think about what Musk said about tunnels during a SpaceX event in January 2016, according to Electrek:

It's a really simple and obvious idea and I wish more people would do it: build more tunnels. Tunnels are great. It's just a hole in the ground, it's not that hard. But if you have tunnels in cities you would massively alleviate congestion and you could have tunnels at all different levels – you could probably have 30 layers of tunnels and completely fix the congestion problem in high-density cities. So I strongly recommend tunnels.

Once again, how wonderful. But are they really easy? Well, let's ask the people of Boston and their infamous Big Dig project. That tunnel, also meant to alleviate traffic downtown, was eight years late and cost way, way more than it was supposed to. Nonetheless, now that the tunnels - technically the Central Artery and Tunnel project - have been opened for over a decade, the city can see that it benefited from the Big Dig through an improved downtown, even if it all could have been done better. With new boring technology and Musk's enthusiasm for doing what others day isn't possible, perhaps he will soon have a short, underground hop from his desk to his plane over at LAX.